Resisting the Conservative Wave

Interview with Miriam Nobre, Coordinator of the International Secretariat of the WMW

The first international delegations of nearly 50 countries, plus representatives of Brazil, began to arrive in Sao Paulo on Monday to participate in the 9th International Meeting of the World March of Women.

Real World Radio interviewed the coordinator of the World March of Women’s International Secretariat Miriam Nobre. Nobre gave a very moving opening speech about the origins and the progress made by the movement since its inception.

She talked about the movement’s history and the things the different groups have achieved, such as workers, peasants, students and women from the political left wing. Nobre specified that, at a certain point of their lives these women decided to affirm and join their struggle.

“This structure is an achievement, but it is also a challenge for us at a time when we suffer conservative attacks that appropriate our discourse”, said Nobre. So, the March needs to affirm its vision at a time of confusion. Another challenge is related with the WMW’s internal organization, both in the country that will host the Secretariat and in the international political agenda it will put forward.

Nobre told Real World Radio that in Brazil, as in other parts of the world, there are recurrent problems such as the exclusion of women and their situation in social protests.

She recalled the case of the university women who were imprisoned in Chile for participating in demonstrations against the privatization of public education, or the constant threat of sexual violence as a form of confronting the social protest in Egypt or Tunisia. There, religious groups have appropriated the process of change, while in Brazil the left-wing social movements were assaulted by fascist groups during the June demonstrations.

The leader of the WMW affirmed the movement’s feminist and anti-capitalist pillars.
She said the ruling political and social system needs to be changed, but it is impossible to do so without criticizing the role the patriarchal society and gender exploitation play in that system.

The 9th International Meeting of the WMW is covered by the social movements’ communications convergence in Sao Paulo.

Finally, Nobre talked about the need for the women of the WMW to work in alliance with other movements, as it happened in the campaign to reject the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), in order to build new alternatives to change the world and strengthen the women’s self-determination around the world.